cobbing

English

Etymology

cob +‎ -ing

Verb

cobbing

1. present participle and gerund of cob

Noun

cobbing (countable and uncountable, plural cobbings)

1. (military, prison) an unofficial form of punishment among the crew or prisoners involving blows to the buttocks from a piece of wood or a handsaw.
   • 1846, Henry Marshall, Military Miscellany, page 156:

     Previous to the infliction of cobbing, or booting, the delinquent is fairly tried by a court, consisting of–a president, the oldest soldier; members, next two oldest soldiers, youngest soldier, next youngest soldier.

2. (mining) The manual separation of minerals in ore using a hammer.
   • 1868, Guido Küstel, A Treatise on Concentration of All Kinds of Ores, page 28:

     It is, therefore, always so arranged that the dressing progresses gradually through all the operations, beginning in the mine and ending with the cobbing, or, as the case may be. with the concentration.

   • 1884, Wheaton Bradish Kunhardt, The Practice of Ore Dressing in Europe, page 19:

     To-day, however, cobbing is still an important operation, carried out with a three-fold purpose: first, to separate pure masses of different minerals from one another and from adhereing pieces of gangue, preparing them at once for the market with qa minimum loss from comminution; secondly, to separate several classes of crussing ores according to the predominance of one or the other of the different minerals they contains; and lastly, to produce a classification according to the nature of the gangue.

   • 2018, Hailian Chen, Zinc for Coin and Brass, page 458:

     Wheeler provides greater detail on ore treatment, such as traditional cobbing and sorting methods.

3. The production of cobs.
   • 1955, Sir Enoch Bruce Levy, Grasslands of New Zealand, page 64:

     In America, Canada, and Central Europe, for example, snow lies feet deep on the ground in the winter, and the summers are sufficiently hot to enable maize to be grown successfully for cobbing,

   • 1995, Maize research for stress environments, page 50:

     There were highly significant differences in percent cobbing between the two fertilizer levels, with the unfertilized treatment producing significantly more cobs than the fertilized treatment.

   • 2020, A. Solaimalai, P. Anantharaju, S. Irulandi, Maize Crop:

     Symptom is stunting of plant, premature wilting of leaves, chlorotic stripes on young leaves, leaf purpling, excessive tillering and cobbing and formation of barren cobs.